When you miss your past, people you know but haven’t met with them for a while, or the things that bring you comfort, we say that you’re feeling nostalgic.
A nostalgic feeling can often involve family or home. It can still involve a longing for long-gone moments like the nostalgic memories you sometimes experience when you listen to songs you enjoyed when you were a child.
Occasional nostalgia might improve your mood, promote your psychological growth, increase your social connectives . Many nostalgic reflections multitask different functions, and they’ll in most cases benefit you when you experience them. Sometimes such benefits may lead to the personality trait of nostalgic proneness or chronic disposition.
One way you can improve your mood is by effectively coping up with problems that hinder your happiness. Nostalgia heightens positive emotions and increases one’s mood, therefore leads to benefits during stressful times for nostalgia prone people. Nostalgia also means more focus on coping and implementing strategies, hence boosting support in challenging moments.
When you feel nostalgic, chances are that your self-esteem increases, you also increase meaning in life. This is so because at such moments, you buffer threats to well-being and initiate a desire to deal with challenges or stress.
The fact that nostalgia revolves around memories with the loved ones means that it increases your sense of social support and connections. Tough it is triggered by feelings of loneliness; it counteracts such feelings with reflections of close relationships.
Reliving past good memories may have physiological effects in that thinking about the past fondly increases perceptions of physical warmth. This often contributes to mental health and provides comfort. A Nostalgia feeling makes people yearn to involve themselves in growth-oriented behaviors. It also makes people view themselves as growth oriented. Nostalgia-induced self-esteem may sometimes mediate the effects of nostalgia in promoting psychological growth.
